List of every Super Bowl halftime performer: Timberlake, Lady Gaga, Prince and more

Check out every artist who's taken the stage for the Super Bowl halftime show

Every year, we see an incredible amount of people tune in to check out what the featured artist has planned for the Super Bowl halftime show. This year, that means seeing if Justin Timberlake can bring sexy back to the biggest stage in entertainment.

Lady Gaga's halftime performance a year ago was credited with 117.5 million viewers. For the artists who play the halftime show at the Super Bowl, they're entertaining an audience that is exponentially bigger than any they've ever encountered.

So, what were the shows like before they were must-see television? Do you remember that killer halftime show featuring the Rockettes, Chubby Checker and the 88 grand pianos in 1988? Do you remember the captivating "Be Bop Bamboozled" at the Orange Bowl in 1989? No, no you do not. Ditto Carol Channing (twice) or any one of those four annoyingly contrived Up With People performances in the late '70s and early '80s.

The Super Bowl halftime show, before Michael Jackson, was an endless wasteland of college marching bands and maddening flag-spinning tributes, from salutes to Hollywood (twice), to Motown, to the Big Band Era, to the Caribbean, to Duke Ellington. We also got the New Kids on the Block (1991) not singing any of their biggest hits and Gloria Estefan (1992) providing the soundtrack for Olympic figure skaters Dorothy Hamill and Brian Boitano of "What would Brian Boitano do?" fame, because nothing says a Minnesota Super Bowl like the lead singer of the Miami Sound Machine.

Then we got the King of Pop at the Rose Bowl in 1993 -- and the Super Bowl halftime show was never the same again.

Justin Timberlake will make history at Super Bowl LII in Minnesota as the only performer to ever grace the world's biggest stage three times. What's in store for JT's big Super Bowl comeback? We've got the latest here.